Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Harold and Maude (1971)

Young Harold is completely obsessed with death. He often fakes his suicides in elaborately staged hoaxes. His mother begs him to be normal and takes him to a therapist. But he doesn't care. One day while visiting a funeral, he meets an old woman. This woman turns out to be Maude, who has a contagious zeal for life.

Yes, normally one would expect a teenager to have a zeal for life and an old person to contemplate death, but here it is the opposite, and that's what draws this two disparate people to each other. I thought it was funny when Harold falls in love with her and the priest tries to talk him out of marrying her. Because she's old. He was trying to describe every reason without saying the words "dry old people vagina" but you could totally tell by the look on his face that's what he was thinking.

What they could have done a better job with is the soundtrack. There seemed to be only one song in the whole film played over and over. And it got stuck in my head. If you want to sing out, sing out! And if you want to be free, be free!

I truly enjoyed this movie. Love has the power to bring such different personalities together. I will give this a 7/10.

Spoiler Alert Notice

More than likely you have already seen these movies, otherwise you wouldn't be on this blog. So many times I will have to include spoilers to fully describe my feelings about these movies. Just to warn you ahead of time.